Budget 2014: An Assault on Home Buyers

Mar 19, 2014

Budget 2014: A response from Russell Quirk, the founder and Chief Executive of Emoov.co.uk the UK’s largest low cost online estate agent. Emoov.co.uk has an ethos that promotes that typically high agency fees stay in the pocket of the consumer, not their estate agent.

Russell Quirk, CEO of Emoov.co.uk says ‘Using the UK housing market as a cash cow now that it is buoyant again, is nothing less than an assault on home buyers and certainly not the politics of those purporting to help ‘hard working people. The wider UK economy has been saved by the housing market yet is now being turned to as a ‘rich uncle’ by Government. Fattening it up then bleeding it dry is an audacious move by George Osborne’.

George Osborne delivered a budget today that seems to have largely ignored the housing market but in doing so, has penalised it.

The stand out injustice in today’s ballot box announcements has to be STAMP DUTY.

Ignoring the amending of this tax on aspiration and not raising thresholds or equalising the levy percentage itself, has left house purchasers far worse off in real terms.

The Office of National Statistics now states that house price inflation will hit 9% in 2014. This assumption significantly hikes the amount received by the Treasury to such an extent that the ONS have revised their deficit forecast DOWNWARDS by £3.4 billion, largely due to these rising prices and higher transactional volumes.

The upshot is that home buyers are to be penalised still further by a regressive and unfair tax that is increasing at the same time as those buyers are struggling to raise deposits and equity enough to move and, at the same time, face rising interest rates and greater mortgage costs into the bargain, as stated by the BoE Governor of late.

The housing market has assisted in pulling the economy of the doldrums yet is now being used as a ‘rich uncle’ by the Government.